Why do conspiracy theorists always believe they’re “free thinkers” who “think for themselves?”
Isn’t it interesting, how some of the most easily baited conspiracy theorists seem to believe they are better at independent thinking than the rest of us? QAnon types view us as “sheeple” taken in by the “corporate media” whereas, they label their own buy in completely ridiculous ideas to be “independent thought.”
While on the surface, this may seem perplexing, this is actually very much how propaganda in democracies work.
I got most of this information from Chapter 3 of How Propaganda Works by Jason Stanley, but highly abbreviated (and, possibly mis-remembered) version of this is:
- Unlike in authoritarian regimes, democracies need to hide that propaganda IS propaganda, because propaganda is seen to be anti-democracy
- Because of this, propaganda needs to be packaged as a way such that it is not seen as propaganda by the people who consume it
- Functionally, what this means, is often propaganda in democracies is presented as the opposite of what it is functionally doing, so that the true function of the propaganda remains hidden to the consumer
So, in this case, a bunch of conspiracy theory propaganda has been wrapped in the label of “free thought” so that people don’t see they’re being manipulated into not thinking for themselves.
To be frank, the belief “I think for myself” is actually a very dangerous belief. What happens is, it causes people to stop being open minded. Once a person attaches their identity to being a “free thinker” they will vasty resist any evidence that their beliefs are not their own.
Thing is, we are all believe things that have been fed to us by culture at large. I would like to lose 10 lbs. Why? Because I’ve internalized our cultural beauty standard. My current weight doesn’t really impact my life negatively in any way, but I think I’d be hotter if I lost 10lbs.
This is not an independent thought, this is a planted thought. If I lived in a culture where we thought fat women were hot, I’d probably want to gain 10 lbs.
If you are not willing to see the parts of your internal beliefs that didn’t come from you, you become highly manipulatable. One of the things about identity, is it’s very hard to budge. As soon as people start thinking of themselves as a “type” of person — e.g. “I’m the type of person that doesn’t like chocolate” they will resist evidence to the contrary.
“Oh, but you liked the chocolate cake I made for Audrey’s birthday?”
“Oh, yeah, but that wasn’t a very chocolatey cake. It was more of a raspberry chocolate cake, and I liked the raspberries.”
As soon as something becomes an identity, people feel compelled to keep justifying the identity, and will start doing things like rejecting evidence to keep it.
So, functionally, now we have a country full of people who identify as free thinkers, what we actually have, is a country full of people who are completely unwilling to examine the source of their underlying belief system. Which means, we have a group of people who are highly susceptible to propaganda, and completely rigid in their belief system.
And, yeah, it’s a fucking mess.
I don’t really know how to undo this, though, How to Win an Information War by Peter Pomerantsev — a book on finding ways to counter propaganda — suggests that the only thing that works, in the end, is demonstrating over and over the ways that their beliefs are hurting them. However, it will be a slow, painful change as these people will resist all information to the contrary, until they are so broken by their own harmful beliefs that they look for other options.
Identity is effectively an addiction, and many people will need to hit rock bottom before they’re willing to abandon it, and many not even then.
What we need to accept is, people are not moved by morality. People are not moved by the suffering of others. People are not moved by abstract ideals like “democracy” and “fairness”.
People are only ever moved by self interest and their own suffering. And, maybe the suffering of their families, but often not even that.
So, we need to keep making it clear — if you believe in X, you will get Y. If you support Musk and Doge, you will lose social security and medicare. If you support Trump, you will get tariffs, and prices will go up.
We are on the precipice of losing social safety nets, of potentially getting things like nasty inflation, and if and when these things happen, we need to connect them back to the policies that Trump and co have put in place.
People believe Trump is “Big Daddy” who has their best interests at heart, despite the fact that he’s a kleptocrat looking to enrich himself and his family at the cost of the American public. But, you will never convince his supporters of this. You have to simply start breaking down, how their life is getting worse because of his policies, and it will probably take 2+ years for that to become apparent, but it’s likely the only thing that will break though.
